Life is a Gift Given with JT Shining Oneside

Through that learning and storytelling up to age seven is really important because that child is watching everything that the parents are the grandparents the teachers everybody that comes into their life everything that they see and it actually starts in the womb that baby understands the mother’s voice you know the father could read stories or tell stories to that baby and you know even singing songs reading anything like that and that baby will when it comes out it will have understandings already we’re working on essential understandings well that baby is already going to be ahead of the game because it already understands knows a lot of different things because it’s coming from gimana to it’s a gift and that is one of the greatest gifts that you can have is the ability to give life and that is one of the women’s roles is that giving life and then you have the grandmothers that become the backbone of the families and they have a lot of reverence and they because i can remember with even you know growing up you know dad had a lot of saying at home but if mom wasn’t happy about something then everything stopped until mom was happy about things the way things would be and then life could get back on to normal because her name was to thunders coming and she had a lot of she just would take the time to listen just like dad would they were both really good about listening and hearing what you had to save it was a big whopper that you were telling at the time but they always had that I just remembered the elders themselves they always had a lot of time and a lot of stories and every story taught a lesson and back in times of old you know things were written on rock until eventually it was written on birch bark scrolls for the Anishinabe the Ojibwe people that’s how our stuff continued to be passed through the generations and now we do winter count you know we have it on animal hides and different things like that but it’s it’s a way of passing on I just came from a camp you know I’m thinking about Lauren learning and storytelling I remember the elder Francis Cree I asked his daughter Brenda I said Brenda what did what did grandpa say about the culture and she said that to be ready there’s going to be a huge change so in thinking about that while we were at that camp we did moccasin games with the youth 7 to 10 year olds and we also played the hand games with them and I told them traditionally the moccasin games are played by men but how else are they going to know their games that their people played unless they get to experience them themselves but to have that understanding traditionally men Pilatus when you go to boissevain you’re going to see Ojibwe Cree Dakota Lakota elders males playing those games but I wanted the youth to experience that but to have that understanding that yes it you know males play this but to know they just had a lot of fun they enjoyed it so that’s part of that malad n mo in that respect you know to understand a piece of their history and so that’s just part of the short part of the learning and storytelling learning that moccasin games does come from your peoples but it’s also the band play it so